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‘Yes, but I’m funny like that,’ returned Hemingway, quite unruffled. ‘When I ask one person a question I get muddled in my head if half a dozen other people start answering.’
‘But naturally I will go apart with you, my dear Inspector!’ said the Prince, recovering his smile. ‘Come! I am at your service!’
He bowed the Inspector out of the room, and took him across the hall to the library. As he closed the door, he said: ‘You do not wish me to repeat my evidence, that is certain. You wish to question me about the affair at the shoot on Saturday. But it is absurd! I must tell you at once that for myself I do not believe that it was anything but a foolish accident. That Mr Steel would fire with deliberation upon Mr Carter I find ridiculous. It is not possible. I cannot discuss such a piece of nonsense.’
‘That’s right, sir, and very handsomely spoken, I’m sure,’ said the Inspector. ‘I won’t ask you anything at all about it.’
‘Ah!’ said the Prince, rather taken aback. ‘You are a sensible man, I perceive. You do not set any store by the strange suspicions of poor Mr Carter. I can speak openly to you, in effect.’
‘That’s just what I hope you will do, sir. I can see we shall get along fine. All I want you to tell me is what time it was when you arrived at the doctor’s house on Sunday?’
‘But, my friend, I have told already once! It was at five minutes to five.’
‘And how did you happen to know that, sir?’
The Prince shrugged. ‘I was too early. The doctor was not in, and when I looked at the time I found it was not then five o’clock. It is very simple! The housekeeper will uphold me, for we spoke of the time together.’
‘Yes,’ said the Inspector mildly. ‘She said she remembered it distinctly, on account of your showing her your watch.’
‘Did I? It may well have been so.’
‘I wonder if I might have a look at that watch of yours, sir?’
‘But certainly!’ The Prince extended his wrist.
The Inspector glanced at his own watch. ‘Thank you, sir. Do you find it keeps good time? They tell me those fancy ones very often don’t.’
‘Excellent time. You would say that I was not at Dr Chester’s house before five? Is that it, may I ask?’
‘Oh no! I wouldn’t say that at all, sir! Not unless I was sure of my facts, that is,’ he added thoughtful
ly. ‘Still, watches do lose sometimes, and we have to be so careful in the Department, you know. So I’ve set a couple of my people on to see if they can’t find someone to corroborate your statement.’
The Prince said in rather a high-pitched voice: ‘This is to insult me! Am I then suspected of having murdered my host? It is iniquitous! It is, in fact, quite laughable, when one considers that it is not I who have the motive for killing that unfortunate! I do not pretend to know anything, but I find it strange that the poor foreigner must be suspected rather than a man who has been detested by Carter; or than Miss Cliffe, who inherits Carter’s fortune; or than – for one must be frank – Miss Fanshawe, who was on the spot, and knows well how to handle a gun!’
‘You’ve got me quite wrong, sir,’ said the Inspector. ‘I’ve got a natural mistrust of watches, that’s all. Yes, what do you want?’
This question was addressed to the butler, who had come into the room. Peake said stiffly that Sergeant Wake wished to speak to him.
‘You can send him in here,’ replied the Inspector, adding kindly to the Prince: ‘I dare say he’s found someone to corroborate your evidence, sir. He’s a very able young fellow, my Sergeant.’
Sergeant Wake, however, had not found any such person. He had found instead the son of the local publican, who had informed him that he had been out walking with his young lady on Sunday afternoon, along the road from Stilhurst to Kershaw, and had seen Miss Fanshawe’s car, with a strange gentleman at the wheel, travelling towards the village just after five o’clock.
‘It’s a lie! I denounce it!’ exclaimed the Prince, grasping the back of a chair.
‘Well, and what makes him so sure it was after five?’ inquired the Inspector.
‘He states that both him and his young lady had heard the village church clock strike the hour about ten minutes before,’ replied Wake. ‘Very positive, he is.’
Inspector Hemingway looked at the Prince. ‘I had a notion all along that watch of yours wasn’t to be trusted,’ he remarked. ‘What you might call a hunch. We shall have to rub it all out and start again. Suppose, sir, you were to talk to me openly, just like you said you would?’
‘It is not true. I dispute it! If my watch can lose so, why then is it now correct?’
‘Would it be because you’ve set it right?’ suggested the Inspector helpfully.
The Prince glared at him. ‘You take the word of an ignorant country fellow before mine? You are insolent, my friend, and I resent it!’
‘Yes, well, we’ll get along a sight better, sir, if you don’t waste my time with that kind of talk. What I want to know is just what you were doing in between the time you left this house, which, by all accounts, can’t have been later than a quarter-to-five, and the time you arrived at the doctor’s house.’
